Cuthbert Tunstall: The Tudor Bishop Who Survived Four Very Different Monarchs

Cuthbert Tunstall: The Tudor Bishop Who Survived Four Very Different Monarchs

I found out the other day about Reginald Pole, and I wanted to find out a little more about some of the people connected to him. So today I want to talk about Cuthbert Tunstall, an English bishop, scholar and royal adviser whose remarkable career stretched across the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

Cuthbert was born in around 1474 at Hackforth in Yorkshire. He was the illegitimate son of Sir Thomas Tunstall and he received an impressive education. He studied at Oxford and Cambridge before continuing his studies at the University of Padua in Italy.

Tunstall became very accomplished, he studied law, mathematics, Greek and Hebrew. He moved with some of the greatest humanist thinkers of the time and became friends with Thomas More and Erasmus.

His knowledge and experience soon got him a place working in royal service.

During the reign of Henry VIII, Tunstall was employed on several diplomatic missions and became Master of the Rolls in 1516. In 1522, he was appointed Bishop of London, and the following year he became Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal.

He also published a book on mathematics in 1522, believed to have been the first printed book produced in England devoted entirely to the subject.

However, religion would increasingly dominate his career.

Tunstall opposed the spread of Protestant ideas and he rejected William Tyndale’s request for support in translating the Bible into English. In 1526, copies of Tyndale’s English New Testament were publicly burned in London under Tunstall’s authority.

In 1530, Cuthbert became Bishop of Durham, succeeding Cardinal Thomas Wolsey.

Tunstall and Pole knew one another and corresponded, but they reacted very differently to Henry VIII’s break with Rome. Pole became one of Henry’s biggest critics and he completely rejected the king’s claim to supremacy over the English Church.

Tunstall was also uncomfortable with many of Henry’s religious changes. He had supported Catherine of Aragon during the dispute over Henry’s marriage, but rather than openly defying the king, he eventually accepted Henry as Supreme Head of the Church of England.

His ability to compromise helped him survive where others did not.

That changed during the reign of Edward VI. As England moved further towards Protestantism, Tunstall opposed some of the new religious reforms. In 1551 he was confined in London, then imprisoned in the Tower and was deprived of the bishopric of Durham in 1552.

Like many others his fortunes changed again when the Catholic Mary I became queen.

Tunstall was released and eventually restored as Bishop of Durham. Reginald Pole also returned to England during Mary’s reign, becoming papal legate and later the Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury as England was reconciled with Rome.

Despite his Catholic beliefs, Tunstall appears to take a more moderate approach towards Protestants within his diocese.

When Elizabeth I succeeded Mary in 1558, however, Tunstall refused to recognise the new royal supremacy over the Church.

He was deprived of his bishopric again in September 1559 and he was placed under house arrest at Lambeth Palace.

Cuthbert Tunstall died there on the 18th of November 1559 at the age of around 85.

His life is particularly fascinating because he lived through almost the entire upheaval of the English Reformation. He tried repeatedly to balance his Catholic beliefs with loyalty to the Crown, but by the beginning of Elizabeth I’s reign, he had finally reached a point where he was no longer prepared to compromise.

The lives of Cuthbert Tunstall and Reginald Pole show just how difficult it could be to navigate the religious upheaval of Tudor England. Each of them made very different decisions, but they both remained important figures throughout a period when England’s religion was changing dramatically.